Daily Prayer

Sunday, 28 February 2010

Paul
writes – In November 2009, Canadian friend and
fellow wayfarer Len Hjalmarson
interviewed one of my pioneering and very thoughtful mentors (by way of his
must read books, e.g. this one – Murray
has a new one out next month / March 10 (thanks for
letting us know Len) Stuart Murray. If Len has previously posted the interview,
I missed it. But, I’ve now read it. It’s a good one.

I
was particularly struck by this statement [there is a great need to “…develop mission strategies to engage
with the burgeoning 'never-churched' rather than the diminishing constituency
of the 'de-churched'…” As someone who is largely
“de-churched” (my natural missional focus, being the “de-churched”), it struck
me that I’m a “diminishing constituency” because the never-been-churched group
grows ever larger, generation-by-generation, while my grouping becomes less –
less unchurched people will join established churches so less will leave. As
Murray notes, this provides a huge missional challenge for Canada, and maybe
more so for New Zealand. Unchanging
“established” churches will largely die as their aging memberships die, while
more and more will be the need for deeply rooted (in the diverse traditions and
heritage of Christianity) mission-shaped outposts that engage contemporary
culture while at the same time nourishing and nurturing their distinctiveness
creatively, humbly, compassionately and creatively.

More and more
urgent is the needed for Rowan Williams notion of “mixed economies” with
missional change happening in established churches and partnerships being
formed between (creative and courageous) established congregations and new
“mission-shaped” church plants and congregations. As Williams and others note,
this will not be a quick fix – it will take years for the transition to occur
and for new ways of being “ancient-future” church to take deep root in
contemporary and future cultural contexts.

The need to start this journey is urgent. In the
ten-to-twenty years it could take, a majority of aged established churches will
have closed their doors because, within them, there will have been no
mission-shaped change and revitalization – no time taken to discern “the future
of God amongst the people of God”. Today’s 75-year olds will be 95 in 20-years
time. And scarily, I as someone who’s been a part of this conversation for a
decade or more will be well-passed middle aged. Will my children do any
better?

Here are a
couple of excerpts from Len’s interview (Murray's responses in italics):

“…Len asks: Along similar lines, what
seem to you to be the pressing questions Canadian leaders are asking?

In Canada I encounter an issue that is familiar from my
visits to Australia - a history of reliance on US models and methods and a
growing suspicion that these do not translate very well into the Canadian (or
Australian) context. A British voice is welcomed into the discussion as an
opportunity of hearing a different perspective. Canadian Christians will soon
be facing the challenge British Christians are already facing - developing
mission strategies to engage with the burgeoning 'never-churched' rather than
the diminishing constituency of the 'de-churched'. This will likely spark a
debate between the leaders of large, successful, modernistic churches that
continue to flourish but engage only with a relatively small (and decreasing)
sector of the population and pioneers of emerging and missional communities
that presently look far less impressive and are as yet unproven, but which
might have the capacity to connect with the post-modern, post-Christendom
society that Canada is becoming…

Len asks: How are UK churches faring in
raising up and equipping the next generation of leaders? What is the greatest
challenge you face in that task?

Another legacy of the Christendom era is the preponderance
of pastors and teachers in all aspects of church life and the continuing
marginalisation of those with pioneering gifts - evangelists, prophets and
apostles. We need to recognise such ministries, provide proper training
processes for them, develop effective support and accountability structures,
and enable them to flourish at local, regional and translocal levels of church
life. Perhaps the greatest challenge we face is raising up indigenous leaders
in urban communities…”

Thanks for
making the interview available Len. You can read the whole interview here.

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Paul writes – One of the things you
can’t escape in suburbia is neighbours – in our case neighbours in pretty close
proximity on three sides of us. One of the longings I had when moving into
suburbia was the development of a sense of community, of having a connection
with your neighbours - of fun, shared interests and activities etc.

To that end I make a point of always
greeting them, of talking to them when you see them (though with 6ft fences
surrounding properties in this suburb, that’s easier said than done, especially
when every house has an internal access garage with automatic door openers –
hence you never get out of your car until you’re inside). We’ve invited
neighbours on either side of us to a BBQ. One couple was able to make it, the
other wasn’t. We enjoyed the experience, but then the neighbours you feel some
sense of – “we could enjoy getting to know these people and we share some
common interests etc”, sell their house and move, and the person who buys it is
a member of the “Exclusive Brethren” so you know you’re going to have nothing
to do with them because they don’t mix.

Then you have neighbours you wave
and smile at, but they ignore you. Or you have neighbours focused solely on
themselves, who close down opportunities for some kind of connection, sometimes
through self-sufficiency, but oftentimes through rudeness, lack of manners (it
doesn’t cost a lot to ring and say “thankyou” does it? I’d think it was a good
excuse to build some connection if relationship and community was useful to
you), and the seemingly pragmatic sense that neighbours are only of value when
you need them to do something for you – and that “something” involves
money.

So, you get all kinds of neighbours
– and typically, you get no say in who your neighbours are.

Simon Holt recently posted a link to a fascinating newspaper
article. The article got me thinking, and it got me lamenting – it’s really
hard to build community in suburbia without the catalyst of good relationships
with your immediate neighbours. These “core” relationships then model the kind
of interchange and shared practices (and sometimes values) that can have a
ripple effect through the wider community. We’ve taken little steps to build
community and we’ve been open to those opportunities if and when they emerge.
But, when you struggle with your immediate neighbours, and in some cases just
don’t like them – plain and simple – it gets really hard to instigate and
encourage the kinds of practices that the newspaper article lists.Thus suburbia becomes a lot less than
it could be in terms of community – it can become a kind of hell on earth, from
which you want to escape.

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Paul writes – Blogging friend and fellow
wayfarer, Mark Berry reflected earlier in the month on General Synod in the UK
and offers some thoughts on “fresh expressions”

“…Graham
Cray told General Synod last week that a crucial factor in the spread of fresh
expressions has been 'a new imagination about the form or shape of church'. He
is right. We have seen over the last half decade an exploration emerge which
concerns not just the stylistic aspects of our gatherings - music, dress,
structure, location, etc - but concerns the very substance of what it is to be
church. The question is, if this is good, how deep are we willing to go?

At the heart of the matter is how we have sought to be
community and how this journey has led us into a new romance with the God who
is by nature community. We have had a new encounter with God as Trinity, not a
hierarchical Trinity with God the Father as the CEO, Jesus as middle management
and the Spirit on the factory floor, but with the Trinity as the root of
radically mutual community ... of the meal table, not the boardroom table!...”

“This is
changing how we see and do leadership within communities, where we put the
emphasis on the flow of gifting rather than the authority of a title or
position…”

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Paul writes - Congratulations to Tom Burstyn
(Director of Photography on The Insatiable Moon) and Barbara Sumner. I'm late again, but
just picked up the news off Mike Riddell's blog. A low budget labour of
love, NZ documentary - This Way of Life - won a “special mention” at the
2010 Berlin Film Festival. It's a stunning achievement and it’s a
stunning film. I watched it three times late last year and was significantly
moved and challenged by each viewing. It’s a very very special and extremely
well-crafted film. Wellie and Colleen Karena - son and mother respectively -
from the family that the film features, both attended the festival along with
Tom and Barbara.

It's a
remarkable film and a stunning and very well deserved recognition.
Incidentally, it made my top 10 or 11 films of 2009 - the full list can
be viewed here.

If you're a kiwi living in NZ you can and
should catch the movie when it's rolled out to New Zealand audiences fromMarch
11th. I might watch it a fourth time, but at the very least I'll be adding
the DVD to my library. For a full list of winners from the festival, click here
(PDF).

Gareth
Higgins and Barry Taylor featured it in their line up at Beyond Cinema: Film
and Spirit gathering in LA in January 2010. You can read about it here. How did the audience experience the movie Gareth and Barry? More on Tom and Barbara’s blog here.

The picture
accompanying this post is Tom Burstyn (on the right) and UK Producer Pip Piper in discussion
on set of The Insatiable Moon in Dec.
last year. Double-click o enlarge.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Paul writes - I've been under time-pressure for
sometime now, and haven't had much opportunity to listen to a whole range of
fascinating interviews / podcasts. I have a backlog, including the podcast that
Steve Taylor blogs about here. I could have put up the link, but not having
listened to it, I wouldn't have felt that I could make any comment on it's
usefulness or otherwise.

So, as I did
recently, on the off-chance that our readership is a little different, I just
want to draw your attention to Steve's post. To whet your appetite, I include
some of his post. You can read the whole thing, by going here. You'll also get the link to the podcast.

Steve (not me)
writes:

"... Church
is people encountering Jesus, with others, in a life changing way. This happens
through the baptism and communion (sacraments). This has also happened
in the past, and thus we have the tradition of the church. The task of ministry
includes the gift of discernment - of seeing God giving gifts to the church,
both in contemporary culture and historically in the tradition - and of
learning how to use these gifts - God’s gifts to the church - creatively and
well..."

Sounds like
the podcast is well worth a listen, especially, but not exclusively, if you're
an Anglican. Church doesn't have to be about unchanging / unreflective practice disconnected from it's cultural context. Missional adaptation will require both/and approaches to the gathered and dispersed life of local churches.

Having written
a little piece on Williams for another context, I shall make time to
have a listen this week.

Monday, 22 February 2010

– I listened to a great little interview on Radio New Zealand National today. The interviewee was Peter Janssen, author of the book Great Kiwi Eats. It was a fascinating interview in its own right, but as I listened, I couldn’t help thinking of French Philosopher Michael de Certeau’s description of the practice of “making do”, Steve Taylor’s book (especially his reflections on the significance of “festivals”), and the whole conversation around cultural engagement, story-telling, the importance of listening, mission and change.

Listen to how Janssen describes the ways that “kiwi” food has changed and been adapted, how food-makers have listened in their various cultural contexts, listened to their customers, adopted adaptive strategies to re-work and re-mix received and imported food cultures, practices and traditions, while at the same time both preserving the important “kiwi” tradition in respect of recipes etc, and yet also being willing to experiment with modifications. You don't have to be a kiwi to appreciate the implications. You could probably tell food stories in your own contexts.

You can listen to the interview here (scroll down). It’s downloadable as an Mp3.

More churches should listen to and engage these kinds of conversations; reflecting as they do on their received tradition and the missional opportunities of a change cultural and historical context.

Saturday, 20 February 2010

Paul writes – Today I just want to
highlight a couple of statements by Alan Roxburgh, and the fact that he has a
very useful new book out. I remember some conversations with him a couple of
years back while he was writing the book. It should be very very useful for leaders
wanting to grapple with the challenges of missional leadership in a
Post-Christendom Western Culture – cultural contexts that are themselves
mission-fields.

It’s a good looking and
well-published book, one which I’m looking forward to reading, against the
backdrop of conversations with Al, and the challenges he and others have been
working hard to try and address through workshops and teaching, his must-read
earlier book in this leadership series (The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World), and the
learning’s that are part of projects such as the Mission in Western Culture Project.

“…We are convinced that the new leadership we need to cultivate isn’t
primarily about more knowledge and content; it's about how you form learning
communities that are apprenticed into new skills and habits…”

“…Missional for me is about how we rediscover a radical engagement
between Scripture and the strange, changing culture(s) in which we find
ourselves. It's about God, not us or the church. When I work with church groups
I try to use language that grounds missional in ways they understand. For me,
then, it's discovering what God is up to in the neighborhoods and communities
in which we live, and seeking to join with God in those places…”

Friday, 19 February 2010

Paul
writes – with the season of Lent having started with Ash
Wednesday on, funnily enough, Wednesday of this week, I thought I’d post a quote
that I find helpfully evocative in terms of framing Lent and its significance.

“Lent is the time for
trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is
about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising
the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard
of its own accord we have the stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with
faith and hope…. Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want
to be.” - Sister Joan Chittister

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Paul writes – Chris Erdman offers an interesting series of posts on the ego.
Below is an excerpt from his post on The
Ego and the Spiritual Life.

“…The ego is not
bad (I do think I’ve said this). It must not be eradicated. Rather, it’s to be
healed, restored, returned to its proper function. The ego, as I understand it,
is a God-given faculty within us . . . part of the image of God. But because of
the Fall (whatever that is), it’s not healthy. It does not properly mediate
between the Id and Superego, but too
often is nearly completely identified with them.

This is central to our problem as human beings, to our
spiritual practice, to the union with God that is the mystery we are all
intended to experience. I think sin is to a large extent this deep and
“original” (that is, at the core of our being) misidentification of ourselves
with our unhealthy egos. I’ve a hunch St. Paul might identify this wounded,
broken ego with the “flesh” in his writings—”flesh” that is not to be discarded
or abused or despised, but healed by it’s gathering into Jesus Christ. The
Incarnation informs us here too…”

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Paul writes - The latest issue of the Spirited Exchanges (UK) newsletter (PDF) – Issue 14 / Feb. 2010 – is out (and attached at the bottom of this post).

While always a fascinating and informative read, this month’s is particularly good. Why? Because it features an article by a Kiwi, Craig Braun, in which he reflects on his research amongst, and in conversation with “four postmodern faith groups in New Zealand. I came across Craig very briefly a few years ago in Wellington. It’s good to get a sense of the trajectory of his research.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In March 2009, I interviewed four faith groups as part of a theology honours degree. I wanted to explore ways these groups engaged with local communities increasingly shaped by what Leonard Sweet calls the culmination of three “culturestorms”; post-modernity, post-Christendom and one Sweet calls post-scale; the very real possibility of planetary self-annihilation. I wanted to better understand how the experience of these groups interacted with Christian faith as a developing and living religion with some 2000 years of history. Several writers explore this sense of development as a form of living treasure, or to use a New Zealand Maori word Taonga, passed like a runner’s baton down from one generation to another (Rae and Davidson).

As a point of difference the project placed emphasis on local experience as the starting point of theological reflection. Taking local experience as a point of departure finds cohesion with the sorts of issues faced by early Christian communities in the twenty years immediately after the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

Glimpses of this period by writers such as Wright, Crossan, Stark, Bauer, Green and Wilken seem to suggest that expressions of Christian faith during this period of inauguration were varied, localised and dynamic in the sense that they evolved or developed in response to the lived experience of early followers. Several of these writers conclude that during this initial period of Christian history, the New Testament and a distinctive Christian tradition emerged and functioned differently in the first twenty years than they have in the last fifteen hundred years.

Two of the groups were based in Christchurch and were attached to one particular church. They functioned as small communities where the physical space of the church auditorium was transformed to offer a variety of worship experiences. Their emphasis was engaging with Christian faith through the experience of reflective installations. The remaining two Wellington based groups were not affiliated to local churches. They were based more on friendship and the exploration of non-evangelical forms of worship and engagement with contemporary urban living. All four groups used a

number of pre-modern Christian rituals as part of this engagement. These include; Lectio Devino, The Examen, Stations of the Cross and the Compline (Night Prayer)…”

You can read the full reflection by downloading the PDF version of the newsletter attached below.